


Chess

by alanharnum



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 15:02:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13169394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alanharnum/pseuds/alanharnum
Summary: Written for Valentine's Day 2001, centred around Touga and Juri in the wake of episode 36. And no, it has nothing to do with the musical. Chess contests with Sonata For Piano Duo in my mind as the best-constructed Utena story I've written, the one that came out in the writing most like I envisioned it in my head.





	Chess

Shoujo Kakumei Utena

CHESS

by

Alan Harnum

This copy of the story is from my Archive of Our Own page at http://archiveofourown.org/users/alanharnum/pseuds/alanharnum.

Spoilers up until the end of Episode 36.

* * *

I didn't hesitate before knocking on her door, because I'm not  
given to hesitation. Not to say I was entirely comfortable with  
the meeting that was about to take place, but I had made  
promises.

She opened the door almost immediately. "Good evening,  
Arisugawa Juri-san," I said formally. Whatever her personal  
feelings for me might be, so long as I were polite to her, her  
own nature would force her to remain polite to me.

"Good evening, President Kiryuu," she replied, matching me  
down to tone and inflection. "This is unexpected. To what do I  
owe the visit?"

The visit, not the pleasure or the honour, I noted, and  
almost smiled. In the days before things began to wind down  
towards the Ends of the World, we had more exchanges like this--  
her sharp, subtle, hidden points, aimed as though to--but never  
succeeding in--bursting the bubble of confident assurance in  
which I lived. They were just one of a host of small things I  
missed after I stopped coming to meetings.

"I won't take up much of your time," I said, almost but not  
quite apologetic.

"Good," she said shortly. Before I could say anything in  
reply, she added, "I have a friend coming over to study soon, you  
see."

I knew instantly by the note in her voice who the friend  
was, and, once again, I had to stop myself from smiling. I had  
always liked Juri, from the day Ruka introduced me to her--truly,  
I had. She was beautiful and witty and clever, and, now that  
her part in the game was at a close, I wished her all the  
happiness in the world. Of course, at the same time, I found it  
incomprehensible that Ruka had loved her so much. But then, dear  
departed friend, you always had that much more of the doomed  
romantic in you than I did, did you not?

"As you undoubtedly know by now, I had a Duel with Tenjou  
Utena last night..." I began.

"Actually," she said crisply, "I did not know."

"Yet you do not seem surprised."

She shrugged. On her, the motion did not look at all  
casual, but as calculated as the rippling of a jungle cat's  
muscles before it springs. "My attentions have been elsewhere  
these days, but I knew it would happen. It is merely the  
timing--not the event--that I could not foresee."

Now I did laugh. "Sometimes you remind me of myself,  
Juri-san."

She smiled, and it was crisp and etched as killing frost.  
"Don't insult me, Touga-san. What do you want?"

I took the harsh words with grace; I had expected them or  
their like from the moment I had deigned to draw a comparison  
between us.

"There are to be no more Duels," I said, coming finally  
round to my point. "I expect you all will soon enough receive  
letters from Ends of the World to tell you this officially, but  
part of the condition of my Duel was that I would ensure no one  
of us would try to take the Rose Bride from her again if I lost."

She curved one eyebrow in a shallow, graceful arch. "And do  
you think you could stop me, if I wished to Duel again?"

"Yes," I said simply. Then I added, "But the point is moot,  
Juri-san, is it not? Your reason for Duelling is shattered, and  
the chains that bound it to you broken."

For a moment, her cover fell away, and she looked much  
younger, scared and lost, desolate, with a hollow sort of grief  
like some abandoned ruin in the desert. I thought: she really is  
little more than a child, for all her strength. Then it occured  
to me that I was only a year older than her, and suddenly I felt  
very young as well. I can't remember the last time I felt young.  
Something of it must have shown on my face, because when she  
composed herself an instant later and hid her turmoil away again,  
her expression was softer.

"No," she said finally, "you're correct, of course. I have  
no more reason to Duel."

I nodded vaguely. "I'll be going then," I said. I was  
still standing in the hallway, with Juri on the other side of the  
open door. I think I nearly bowed, feeling oddly close to her in  
that moment, and I suppose in hindsight that she felt something  
of the same. "Take care of yourself, Juri-san."

"And you take care of yourself, Touga-san." Her voice was  
gentle and almost kind; I had never been spoken to by her in that  
manner before.

I turned to leave, and, as I did, my eye caught on the chess  
board in the corner of the room. Red king, red queen, white  
pawn.

"You play chess?" I asked rhetorically, tilting my head in  
the direction of the board.

"I do many things," she said cooly.

"I used to play with Nanami," I said. That had been a long  
time ago. Centuries ago, as my mind seems to measure things. I  
remember that I used to keep a very careful mental tally, and,  
every third game I would let her win, because it made her smile  
so. But I can't remember now why I ever did a thing like that.  
"With Saionji, too, but he was always so impatient. No head for  
strategy." I paused; the silence between us was both weighted  
and barbed. "Sometimes Tsuchiya and I played."

She nodded as though she had expected it. Spoken aloud,  
his name drew no apparent response from her. "He had a portable  
board. One of those roll-up vinyl ones in a tube, with the cheap  
plastic pieces. He would always carry it around in his fencing  
bag. We used to play after we got tired of fencing, up at our  
spot."

"You had a spot?" I asked. I wondered--not, of course, for  
the first time, but with perhaps more interest than ever before--  
just what kind of relationship they'd had before he left the  
school for the first time.

"Yes," she said. I was wondering by then why I was still  
there, and why she hadn't closed the door on me yet; I suspect  
she was probably wondering the same. "We had a spot."

"I was sorry to hear about his death," I said finally. "We  
always respected one another, even if we were not always  
friends."

"Thank you." She closed her eyes as she said it, very  
briefly, and I felt for a moment envious of Ruka: he'd gone down  
into the darkness, as I had, and, as I had, he had made one last  
stab at the light for the one he loved. But succeed or fail (I  
didn't, in truth, know what he'd been trying to do well enough to  
say for certain), he'd had the fortune to die. It's so much  
easier to forgive the dead than to forgive the living.

I am usually not so melancholic, but it had been a bad week.  
I had already spoken to Miki and his sister (I did not like the  
look in dear little Kozue's eyes as she watched Miki quietly and  
respectfully agree with everthing I said), and, after this was  
over, I was going to have to somehow think of something to say to  
my sister. Saionji, I needed no words for; he understood it all  
better than I did, even--good foolish friend that he is.

I'm usually very good at hiding how I really feel, but I  
suppose that night I wasn't. Something showed through--a tic in  
my face or a twitch of my eyes, or the curve of my mouth or the  
angle of my body or the sound of my voice. I don't know exactly  
what. There are a hundred ways to give yourself away, and I know  
them all from watching other people.

But somehow I did reveal myself, and I knew instantly,  
because her expression softened again, and I saw her look at me--  
it was both humiliating and pleasant, in its way--as I'd  
sometimes seen her look at Miki during Council meetings. No--not  
like that. The same look Utena had given me on the night we went  
to the Arena: sympathy without forgiveness, understanding without  
forgetting. As with Utena, I got a brief glimpse at the bright  
world within the walls, with the implicit understanding that a  
glimpse was all I was going to get; for it was all that I  
deserved.

I suddenly felt myself gripped by a terrible burning anger,  
a desire as I imagine some rough barbarian might feel gazing upon  
the gilded towers of a great city. How beautiful, and how smug  
and righteous in her beauty! I wanted in that moment to take  
every lovely thing in the world in the hollow of my hand, crush  
them and make them ugly, drag them down with me. But the feeling  
passed quickly; it frightened me (and I am not often frightened),  
and I hoped it would never come upon me again.

"Would you like to come and have some coffee before you  
leave?" Juri asked. Not at all hesitant or nervous or uncertain;  
I'm still not sure whether or not it was a snap decision on her  
part, or some culminating act to bring our long, uneasy  
association to a close.

"What about your study date?" I inquired. I put no emphasis  
at all on the word "date"; all the same, her face twitched  
reflexively, in such a way that I knew I had scored a hit.

"Shiori isn't due to arrive for a while yet," she said  
coolly. She stepped back, pulling the door a little wider as she  
did. I came inside, my hands tucked into my pockets, as casually  
as I would have entered the residence of any other girl who asked  
me in for coffee.

"Have a seat," she said, and gestured towards one of the  
high-backed chairs at the chessboard.

I slipped off my shoes and, not spotting any extra pairs of  
slippers, gave a mental shrug and went about in my socks. "Thank  
you."

"How do you take it?"

"Milk, no sugar."

I sat in silence and examined the chessboard, while she  
moved about beyond my sight in her small kitchenette. I studied  
the position of the pieces and tried to decide what they meant.  
If it was supposed to be a problem for study, it was an  
insoluble one; a single pawn could neither take the king, nor  
reach the end of the board and become a stronger piece--not while  
the queen, who could move any distance, any direction, still  
stood.

I heard the rattle of spoons against porcelain; Juri emerged  
from the kitchenette with mugs in hand, and offered one to me.  
As I took it, I noted they were a matched set: heavy white  
porcelain with the name, address and phone number of the local  
bowling alley printed on the side in red. I raised an eyebrow at  
that, and smiled.

"I have twenty-eight of them at last count," she said after  
a moment, sitting down across from me, the chessboard between us.  
"I keep on winning them in tournaments, and I'm always meaning to  
throw them out..." She trailed away, scowling slightly at my  
continued amusement. "They're good mugs," she muttered.

I laughed, and it was genuine. "You've many sides, Juri."

"I like having lots of things to do," she said dismissively,  
sipping her coffee. Remarkable how she could even make drinking  
coffee from a clunky bowling alley mug look elegant. "If I have  
free time, I start to brood, and I do enough of that already."

"Sometimes brooding is better than the alternative," I said.  
And I thought of my room, my wide empty room, with my chair and  
my records.

"Oh?" she asked archly. She had taken a white knight from  
the wooden box beside the board, and was slowly turning it  
between the graceful fingers of her left hand.

I wondered how much she knew, how much she had put together.  
Did she realize that before he could come to any of them, he  
would have had to come to me? To come and rescue me from the  
coffin Utena had placed me in, and fit me for a new one?

Having nothing to say in reply, I kept my silence, and drank  
the coffee she had made me. It was good; some specialty blend,  
with a dark hint of bitter chocolate.

"What's eating you, President Kiryuu?" she asked.

For a moment, I remained wordless, and then I thought,  
silently laughing: why? Why bother any longer with secrets,  
deceptions and hidden things? How, I realized--and such a  
freedom came with it!--could anything after this be worse, now  
that she had rejected me, now that I knew that if any force on  
earth could save her, I did not possess it?

Despite all that, the quiet brokenness in my voice surprised  
me. "Does it become easier, Juri? Does it ever?"

She watched me quietly for a moment; then, quite precisely,  
she asked, "Does what?"

"Knowing you won't be loved back?"

The white knight dropped from her fingers, bounced once on  
the chessboard, rolled towards the edge. I stopped it with the  
flat of my hand before it could roll off the table.

"Yes," she said. Other than the dropped knight, she was  
showing no response to my words. "It does. Surprisingly  
quickly, if you let it."

I righted the knight and placed it on the edge of the board.  
"I'm not one to cling to things," I said softly.

She nodded. "I had wondered why the great playboy had been  
returning all the letters from his admirers unopened."

Suddenly hating the intimacy of the moment, wanting to tear  
it apart, I smiled enticingly at her and said, "Did you finally  
get around to sending me one, then?"

To my surprise, she tilted her head back slightly--Lord, I  
thought with an appreciation for the female form born of long  
experience of it, her neck alone is a work of art--and laughed,  
almost girlishly.

"Rumours spread quickly in this school," she said after her  
amusement was finished, lowering her head so that her eyes met  
mine. She paused for a moment, then added, smiling: "You know,  
Touga, I think that's the first time you've ever made a pass at  
me."

I idly contemplated what it would be like to make love to  
her. It would probably be quite different from any of my usual  
play in bed. Her body was lean and muscular from those endless  
hours of fencing, but still perfectly feminine. She would almost  
certainly want to be on top, proud head thrown back, tight curls  
bouncing against her bare shoulders.

The thought was in no way arousing; I entertained it merely  
as an imaginative possibility. I am very detached during sex, as  
though I am not possessed entirely of my body: at one moment I  
will be seeing the flushed, moaning face of a partner through my  
own eyes, and then I will be suddenly a thousand miles away,  
watching as though through a telescope the ugly, naked, animal  
thrashings of two alien bodies upon the bed. Utena--I had  
realized this only a short while--was the only girl who had ever  
attracted _me_, Kiryuu Touga in his entirety, rather than just  
some fractured section of him. Every fibre of my being yearned  
for her--yearns for her still. I would have laughed at the idea  
scant months ago, but I had never felt it before, never known  
that love could be something more than a naive delusion in the  
minds of fools and children, that it could awake like a ghost  
even in the most selfish and worldy of men. Love is not a  
delusion, but a reality: it is as real as hunger, as real as  
thirst, and I have been made a slave to it, just as my body is a  
slave to those.

All of this passed through my mind in seconds, short enough  
a time that my reply to her did not seem hesitant. "There is a  
first time for everything, Juri. I think we have much in  
common--we are both suffering from the pain of unrequited love."  
And I winked at her, caught up in the moment; or perhaps more  
than that. There was a lot of Utena in her, and a lot of her in  
Utena. "Care to take solace in one another's arms?"

She was silent as a statue for a long time, and I knew that  
I had gone at least one step too far. I will flatter myself by  
thinking that, perhaps, she even saw some appeal in the  
suggestion. Tsuchiya and I, after all, were cast from much the  
same mould. At the same time, she was still just as full of hurt  
as I was, and probably much more confused.

"There is a difference," she said finally, very softly but  
with utter conviction. "There is a very large difference. I  
deserve her. You don't." She paused, and her eyes locked with  
mine; blazed with rage. Against me, against Takatsuki Shiori,  
against the entire world. "If there were any justice, she  
would... she would..."

The pain in her voice was tremendous. I had never been  
able to imagine Juri crying before, but now the image came to me  
easily: quietly, alone in a place where no one could see her, for  
a long time. I had known for a some time, of course, about her  
hidden love for her childhood friend, but the sheer agony through  
which it must have put her, even if so much of it was self-  
inflicted and almost self-indulgent, struck me suddenly and  
deeply. Her wounds were revealed to me, and I could not think at  
all, "What use can I make of this?", as I would have a few months  
ago, but only, with the terrible simplicity of a child, "Poor  
Juri."

Oh, Utena, my love, my princess, what have you done to me?

I rose and moved behind her and put my hand on her shoulder.  
When she did not draw away or protest, I moved it to the curve of  
her neck, my fingers to the hollow of her throat beneath her  
strong, slim jaw. Her pulse beat fast against them.

I bent my head down and whispered into her ear, through  
those glorious curls, "Why have we never gotten to know each  
other like this before, Juri?"

Her hand came up, took my wrist--not without any intent to  
hurt, but very firmly--and lifted my touch away from her as  
though it were a clinging vine or a dead tree branch.

"Because, Touga," she said quietly, "you're a bastard, and  
I'm a lesbian." There was not a trace of humour in her voice.

"Of course," I agreed. I might have been a student  
receiving correction on an improper equation or a mistranslated  
English sentence. "I had forgotten briefly."

There are some boundaries that can be crossed, and then  
there are some to which it is given only that they will, briefly  
and infrequently, become a little blurred. Ours was the latter.  
I think in some other configuration of the world, even a slightly  
different one, we could have been good friends, perhaps even  
lovers. But here we were as we were and that seemed unlikely to  
change any time soon.

"I suppose you'll be going soon?" she said pointedly. "I  
don't think I was the first one you've spoken to today, nor am I  
to be the last, yes?"

I nodded. She understood, then, that there was an order to  
these things, a symmetry.

"Go talk to your sister, Touga," Juri said quietly. I  
cannot say whether it was advice or command.

Again, I nodded. I moved to the door and slipped on my  
shoes. "Take care, Juri," I said, repeating my earlier words,  
knowing that now I would be leaving, that the moment was gone,  
that such a moment would likely never come between us again--that  
by tomorrow, even, it would seem to have faded. It would be as a  
dream dreamt long ago. I would reflect on some of the things I  
had thought with contempt, believing that I had them only  
cynically, as private amusements, as hidden jokes.

There are no coincidences in this world--this garden, he  
called it a garden to me, once--that we inhabit. Terrifyingly,  
monstrously, there are no coincidences at all. Red king, white  
pawn, red queen.

"Take care, Touga."

I left her then, climbed down the three flights of stairs  
(these days I do not take elevators unless I must), was relieved  
to see no girls from the school in the lobby to impede me with  
their chatter. As I opened the door and walked out, I threw a  
last glance back towards the way from which I had come, as though  
doing that might prevent the moment escaping me. Thus, not  
watching where I was going, I collided with a girl as I stepped  
out into the street. Being much larger, I nearly knocked her  
flat. As it was, she dropped her bag, and its clasp popped;  
books, papers, pen, spilled out.

"Pardon me, please," I said, as I steadied her. I knelt to  
help her gather her things; in the evening light, she recognized  
me before I did her (I have long been in the habit of letting my  
eyes glide over a girl's face in appreciation of its features  
without making any attempt to memorize them), and I heard her  
gasp aloud, fearfully.

"President Kiryuu," she said.

"Yes," I replied. I tucked the last pen into her bag, then  
handed it to her. "You should get the clasp on this fixed,  
Takatsuki Shiori-san. I'm sorry for running into you like that."

"It's all right," she said. She had, I noted, an unusually  
sweet voice, very musical, very attractive. Her bag was  
clutched to her chest like a shield. "We met by the fountain,"  
she said after a long pause, and there was something in her  
voice that made think she might soon burst into tears.

I realized then that she was desperately needy, that I could  
have taken her and made her mine with ease, just as Tsuchiya did.  
I wondered whether he had enjoyed her, for I'd known him well  
enough to know that he would have despised anything that Juri  
loved other than him, particularly if it did not love her back;  
had he taken any pleasure at all in that lithe little body, or  
had it been merely something he'd done because he had to?

He undoubtedly would have thought of it as the latter,  
whatever the reality of it was. That was one of the ways that we  
had been different; I think he really did believe in his own  
justifications, most of the time.

I could have taken her, as I said. May I buy you dinner  
tomorrow make my apology proper, Shiori-san? And after that a  
walk in the park by the moonlight, and after that...

But that wasn't who I was any longer, despite my wishes.  
Sometimes I think I could grow to hate Utena for being who she  
is, for making me love her despite what I was, and thereby making  
me what I am.

And what is that? Who is Kiryuu Touga now? A bastard, I  
thought--just as Juri said. By birth, by nature. One does not  
become a different man through a few loose acts of tarnished  
goodness after living for so long in the darkness. I am not a  
snake, to shed my skin its entirety, nor do I wish to be.

But neither am I what I was, and I've only you to thank and  
blame for that, don't I, Utena? You gave me back my heart, and  
then you tore a piece of it off for yourself; I will always need  
you, and I will always lack you, in this old world or in some new  
one.

So all I did was look at Takatsuki Shiori, the girl whom  
Juri loved and would likely never have, and I said, "Yes, by the  
fountain. But those days are done now."

She nodded. The eager desperation for me to notice her  
and single her out as somehow special vanished from her face. I  
wonder, perhaps, did I only imagine it there? "Were you talking  
to Juri-san just now? This is her building."

"Yes. You're going to see her?"

"We're going to study together," she said. Her smile was  
bright and happy, but shy. "For English. I've always been  
pretty good at English--" Then she laughed; she no longer seemed  
frightened by me at all. "But you don't really care, of course.  
I'm sorry. Good night."

I bid her good night as well, and left for home. It was a  
long walk, but I looked forward to it. I didn't know what I was  
going to say to Nanami, who'd been staying home from school,  
hardly ever leaving her room. When she sees me, she speaks  
quietly, with almost absurd politeness, and calls me Touga.  
There are no words for her that I can find, not even the  
truth--if she would believe it. Thank you, God, for symmetry,  
for saving her for last.

Utena let me hold her under the stars for a brief, sweet  
while. Juri invited me in for coffee. Small kindnesses, as  
precious as jewels. Kindness is all the kinder when it is  
undeserved, unearned.

I wish it hadn't taken me so long to understand. I wish  
that I'd known from the very start that I loved her, because then  
this change might actually be able to make a difference, rather  
than simply leaving me utterly hollow.

Red king, red queen, white pawn. And no more pieces on the  
board, all the other chessmen in the box. A coffin is a kind of  
box, isn't it? All in the same coffin together, clinging--or  
trying to cling--to one another.

The night is coming down. The constellations are surfacing  
from the black. Streetlight, starlight. It's a long way home.  
Plenty of time to think. I'll come up with something to say by  
then, something to fix things. I know I will.

END

Notes:

Another story, like "Sonata For Piano Duo", born of my awkward  
class schedule at the University of Toronto, begun some weeks  
back and then finished in time for Valentine's Day when I  
realized that the themes of it fit. There is, at least for me,  
something very different about writing a story by hand rather  
than composing it before the monitor of the computer.

It is in some ways both more difficult and much easier to write a  
story focused upon the relationship between two characters who  
have as little genuine interaction in the series as Touga and  
Juri do. There is a greater freedom coupled to a lack of clear  
guidance, of the definitions of the boundaries and intricacies  
that a relationship between two complex characters would involve.

Written in the lobby of Victoria College, in the Laidlaw Library,  
in various classes, on the subway, and finished in the Spadina  
Public Library.


End file.
